About Me

Tuesday, 23 May 2017

This is my own editorial about the subjects of
Stereotyping, Prejudice, Empathy, Discrimination and the Authoritarian Personality - which I wrote in regard to my psychology qualification I was
taking at the time.

Firstly, let’s get started on
‘Stereotyping’. This term is defined as views being held by people about
certain groups of other people according to their physical shape, their
religious beliefs and their ethnic background. It can be generalised as an
oversimplified opinion of others.

As a crude example, you could
give a negative stereotype to a group of football supporters congregating
outside a pub - they being classed as boisterous, intimidating, rude and
aggressive.

But on the other hand you could have a positive stereotype of
another set of people. A case in point being the medical profession - with
nurses at its head. You would have a positive opinion of them, as generally
they are seen as being compassionate, kind and helpful.

A Stereotyping Study

Rubin et al. 1977. This study was done in an attempt to see if
parents stereotyped their babies.

The study found that the parents’ view of their baby girls was -
they were seen as being soft and fragile. While the baby boys were seen as
being highly responsive, tough and durable.

So as a pretext, parents seem to stereotype their babies due to
the ‘sex’ of their offspring. They buy applicable clothes, toys and prepare
living space according to their stereotypical views of their babies’ sex.

Nevertheless, we need to get into
the practical implications of stereotyping. And what influences, say from the
media and society values - and how they can have an impact.

For instance, the way the media
portrays celebrities these days has changed radically from sixty years ago. The
term ‘Celebrity’, in the middle and early 20th century, was defined
as someone having a creative and important role - say being an actor, writer, a
director or a rock musician. You had to have had a talent which singled you out
as being intelligent and important. Nowadays, with the concept of the 'Reality
‘Celebrity', children are exposed to a fake optimism.

These so-called people in the
entertainment profession with no specified talent; apart from being in a real
life situation - sadly, are the norm these days. And accordingly, TV producers and
executives have leapt onto this ‘twisted idea’ and made countless television
shows: an example being the ‘Big Brother’ show – which unfortunately has
spawned a whole generation of other ‘reality shows’ to follow in its wake.

With this in mind, it’s a
disturbing aspect to our society, as children look up to these shallow reality
show ‘individuals’ as stereotypes and want to be famous just like them, but
without the concept of the hard work that was once needed. You could reason
that this is the throwaway concept of the ‘soulless role model’ which exists in
our society today.

This viewpoint brings us neatly
onto using the negative effects of stereotyping - and to go against the flow, using
the positive aspects of stereotyping in our lives

Stereotyping can be an asset in
making quick decisions, which is important for our safety. If you are walking
along a road at night and see a group of ‘Teenage Hoodies’, because of the
stereotyping associated with them: recklessness, criminality, thievery, you
probably would quickly avoid them. On the other hand, to counter this, because
of this ‘negative stereotype’ your opinion is biased and you would not
appreciate any positive attributes, like say if you were to lose your way. You
could have approached this group and asked for directions, and they may have
been perfectly amicable in helping you.

So stereotyping is like a pendulum, which can swing our
viewpoint from one set of values, and back to a new set of values according to
a generalised view. Moreover, the long lasting effects on future generations:
say for example the fear of ‘Teenage Hoodies’, and the fakery of the ‘reality
celebrity’ could be hard to eradicate. And this could have serious consequences
to how all of us interact in our society
- which is already fractured and shallow.

Prejudice

Prejudice is a rigid set of
beliefs attributed to certain groups of people and discrimination is a
prejudiced view of individuals.

As an example, age is being used
these days in the television industry in regard to female presenters. After the
age of 45 they are deemed unworthy to the viewers’ eye. This is a ridiculous
‘male executive prejudice’ and is without basis.

Margaret Thatcher was well
into her middle fifties when she became Prime Minister, and she was deemed
pleasing to the eye by her contemporaries - mind you this was only relevant
when she first entered Downing Street.

The view of her changed
dramatically while into her premiership. She was later classed as being uncompromising. This may have had a knock on effect in the way older
women are perceived - and how older women are positioned in the political and
television arenas by ‘The Powers That Be’ today. Nevertheless, we do have laws
in place about discrimination and there have been a number of high profile
Court Cases: one involved the female presenter of a BBC show.

That being said, more older women
have taken television and other industry bosses to court and won - against the
prejudice and discrimination they faced.

A Prejudice Study

A study by Barrett And Shore
(1992), decided to investigate how prejudice occurred amongst young children,
and if any influences may have been behind their views.

216 children were interviewed
about their opinions and views about people from other European countries.

The study found that the
children, even at the age of ten, had already developed prejudiced views. The
children deduced that people from France were the most pleasing - while people
from Germany were the most disliked.

This is an interesting study as the children may not of had any
background information about these countries’ peoples.

So we have to ask, why did these
children hold such views? Well there
are the parental influences for example - they could have biased their
children’s view about ‘Germans’ by the way they were viewed as tourists in
Europe.

German tourists always seem to
grab the sun beds, beside many European hotels’ swimming pools. Also, there are
the children’s grandparents influences to take into account. The German
atrocities in World War II would of made unpalatable listening to any
children’s ears.

And with World War II, we can bring in the argument about
why the French had a positive aspect on the children. One reason could have
been the stories about the ‘French Resistance’ and its bravery against the
German Nazi occupation. This would have given the children a constructive view
about the French.

Authoritarian Personality:
The Adorno Study (1950)

People with an
Authoritarian Personality are susceptible to being prejudiced.

Adorno wanted to see if a
person’s personality could have prejudiced beliefs. He used a questionnaire
called the ‘F-Scale’ to measure this. He found after interviewing hundreds of
people using the ‘F-scale questionnaire, that people with an 'Authoritarian
Personality' were predisposed to being prejudiced and have unpleasant
personality traits.

Adorno did this research to find
out, for instance, why during World War II, Nazi soldiers became so sadistic
and fetid in their treatment of the Jews, the mentally ill, and the disabled.
The Adorno study found that someone with an ‘Authoritarian Personality’ trait
stuck rigidly to traditional beliefs and values, were susceptible to those in
higher authority - and were stubborn to
any change. In addition, their parents were critical and cruel.

I myself, have criticisms of
Adorno’s research’. After investigation I found the ‘F-Scale’ questionnaire was
easier to answer ‘yes to’ rather than ‘no to.’ Also, the ‘Authoritarian
Personality’ has a flaw. Not all people born into an inflexible, stern parental
structure would develop an ‘Authoritarian Personality’. And vice versa - some
people who are brought up in a loving, considerate and ideal family unit may
develop an ‘Authoritarian Personality’.

Prejudice and Discrimination
Between Groups

Sherif (1961) And the
Robbers’ Cave Experiment.

This study was done in an effort
to see how groups would react if they had to compete over scarce resources.
Sherif used an American Summer Camp situation in Oklahoma.

The boys were split into two
groups, and the two groups gradually attained their own identity. Next a
competition was introduced, where both groups had to battle for a prize.
Rapidly, and due to their own group identity – both groups of boys became
hostile to each other. Sherif concluded that competition caused prejudice.

Loosely we could attribute ‘Sherif’s
study’ to the current 2010 to 2015, British Conservative and Liberal Democrat
collation government, which is collapsing amongst bitter recriminations. Many
times cabinet staff bicker over funding for their different departments. And
this leads to prejudice against each other – with briefings to different press
organizations.

Nevertheless, with that point
aside there are flaws in Adorno’s experiment.

Adorno only used boys in the
study; would the results be replicated with females? Also, the boys were from
middle-class families, consequently the poverty aspects were not taken into
account. Ethnic minorities were also not used in the study. Would they have
behaved differently?

Moreover, because the boys were
American, different nationalities may of reacted and behaved in another way.
For example, the poor in India seem to integrate and are more inclined to work
together – rather than compete aggressively. This may be down to the extreme
poverty and that resources in India are indeed limited.

Because of the ‘Adorno
experiment’, and since it defines between different groups - we come to another
factor: The ‘In-group’ and ‘Out-group phenomena’.

‘In-groups’ are people you
consider to have something familiar with, and ‘Out-groups’ are people who you
consider irrelevant and unpalatable.

Tajfel (1970)

Tajfel conducted a study to show how people in ‘In-groups’
discriminate against ‘Out-groups’. He used boys, aged between 14 and 15, and
indiscriminately positioned them in two groups. The boys were each given an
activity to perform. Consequently, due to the nature of the experiment - a game
which involving numbered cards - the boys in the ‘In-groups’ gave themselves a
higher score, regardless if this was the goal of the game’s outcome.

Thus, they discriminated against the other boys in the
‘Out-group’ just to spite and antagonise them.

Even so, in my estimate, Tajfel’s
study was conducted in an artificial set-up and therefore the
ecological-validity aspect could not be taken into account because it was not a
real life situation. Also, the age of the boys were 14 and 15, and there were
no females. Would the same results have been replicated if the opposite sex was
used?

How can we reduce Prejudice and Discrimination?

With the evidence from Sherif’s
experiments about prejudice and discrimination we can examine and study the
results from ‘Aronson (2000)’. He achieved positive results with his own
research. The technique given to his experiment was the ‘Jigsaw Method’, which
main aim was to reduce prejudice amongst ethnic groups.

Individual ethnic students were
given a topic in which they became knowledgeable. They then gave an educated
talk on their topic to the other students within the group. After the
experiment had taken place, ‘Aronson’ found that prejudice, discrimination, and
the perception of the racial minorities amongst the white-members of the group
had been improved.

However, under closer inspection,
when the ‘white members’ of the group finished ‘Aronson’s’ experiment and
departed from the classroom environment - the racial prejudice seemed to
re-enter back into the fray and also discrimination occurred. As a result, only
under the controlled ‘Aronson environment’ of the classroom was his research
valid.

Evidence From the Elliot and
Harwood Studies

Both of these experiments were
used to create empathy, using psychological understanding as the tool. Its aim
was to make people appreciate and empathize about how discriminated groups feel
- and how they would react if subjected to the same bigotry.

After Martin Luther King was assaaninted, Elliot (1970),
wanted to see how her young pupils felt to be the victims of discrimination.

She told her blue-eyed pupils in
the experiment that they were clever and more important than the pupils with
brown-eyes.

Also, that her blue-eyed children
were superior in physical aspects. She told the brown-eyed children in the
group that they could not interact with the blue-eyed children because they
were inferior.

This experiment caused an
immediate effect on the blue-eyed children; they became aggressive, happy and
felt significant. But the brown-eyed children became depressed, withdrawn, and
uncertain.

The next day the roles were
reversed in the experiment. And the same results occurred, but this time it was
the brown-eyed children who experienced the same emotions that the blue-eyed
children had experienced the previous day.

Elliot concluded that getting children to experience at
first hand the ‘effects’ of discrimination – would make them, when they
progressed into adulthood, more sympathetic to those groups who experienced
prejudice and inequality.

In a summing up of ‘Elliot’s study’, I found her research
had an ethical aspect to it. It was unacceptable to practice this on young
children. There could have been a conflict of interests with the parents, who
may not of allowed this procedure to take place. Nevertheless, in spite of this
point, when the pupils were contacted later on into their lives - they had
developed significant empathy towards other people who suffer discrimination.
While other pupils who had not taken part Elliot’s study - did not have the
same levels of empathy.

Thursday, 11 May 2017

This is a little essay I wrote a few years ago in regard to the scientific aspect of time, consciousness, and the how the universe may have come into being.

The study of Religion, Evolution,
The Big Bang, God, Intelligence and Aliens has raised countless fundamental
questions about what happened at the beginning of time, and ultimately, what
will happen when time ceases to exist in its present form.

Nevertheless, through all investigations and scrutiny have we
learned or gained a concrete view on our existence and what ultimately created
us?

Consciousness or intelligence, is an energy-life-force that
resides in all of us. Where it comes from, or where it goes to after our demise
is still frustratingly elusive.

So, unless a way can be found to capture Consciousness or
intelligence, or isolate Consciousness or intelligence from our biological
bodies – and begin a study into what kind of energy it is structured from, we
will never actually know how it could have been formed, and how it could have
been created by some ‘Third force’.

As a case in point, the spectre of modern day physics should not
be used like a crutch by the scientific community for generalizations
and assertions on all manner of theories and climaxes about Creation. Their
explanations, however well meaning, are by no way a substitute for the facts;
and the only facts that would resonate with me – would only be realized
if they were actually documented from the eyes and the ears of a 'human witness' giving specific testament at the definite moment of our
Universe’s creation.

There is no way that anyone could have possibly witnessed the
creation of our own planet Earth, because nobody existed at the moment of its
conception, except for God that is, but that’s only on condition that HE
exists.

It all leaves me with such frustrations, as we seem to be
still grappling at straws. The situation is not helped when on our television
screens most nights we are subjected to numerous intellectual characters,
all wheeled out like decaying exhibits with qualifications and credentials
squeezed against their names – all making entertainment out of the Creation process
and the fabric of our Universe. To me, some of these characters’
remonstrations, answers and theories are inconclusive and banal. And they are
on a par, with say a World Leader, attempting to defend the use of Nuclear
weapons in warfare: nobody can win!

Also, I do wish a few of these scientists would stick to being
scientists and not take on the persona of outlandish celebrities.

Nevertheless, if we can’t find conclusive facts about Creation,
maybe the human brain is our ‘knight in shining amour’. It is undoubtedly the
clue on how intelligence and Consciousness is formed.

The human brain is awash with billions of neurons and atoms
sparking with energy and power. And these atoms are the ‘cosmological make up’
of our universe. Now, as well as atoms being biological, they are in everything
around us that we can possibly see – and cannot possibly see. Atoms are
electrical; they have energy inside, breaking down and reforming countless
times, similar to how ‘Mother Nature’ breaks down and reforms matter on our
Planet Earth.

Now, if only a way could be found to harness all of these
astonishing building blocks of life and actually create our own world of
Consciousness, or intelligence, without the aid of a God or a Third force.

A doctor could remove tissue samples from a human brain.
Transfer it to a laboratory, and under intense manipulation we could attempt to
facilitate the neuron cells: that sparking nervous activity of the brain
– and help IT to multiply and grow and ultimately combine together,
creating a thinking process. This could be then stored in one of our own kinds
of manufactured brains, be it on a computer or inside an organic substance.

Could IT then become self-aware, and next what is to say,
that after a period of study an artificial intelligence may well make the leap
into a thinking-type-Consciousness.

It is a prospect to be deeply considered. And I’m sure some
gifted person will be able to crack this code one day in the future. This then
could finally unlock the secrets of our Universe and our Being. And would lead
on to the final answer on ‘why’ or ‘how’ the Human Race formed – and why our
remarkable Universe exploded from out of space and from out of matter.